Villagers ‘can’t believe what they saw’ after yet another sighting of a suspected drone was spotted flying close to an American air base in Britain.
MailOnline has found new video footage captured by a local resident showing a suspected drone flying over Hockwold cum Wilton, merely six miles away from RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk.
The village sits between two Air Force bases, RAF Feltwell and RAF Lakenheath.
Meanwhile, strange drone sightings near a US Army base in New Jersey have caused quite a stir, as the federal government has been unable to offer an explanation for these events. Witnesses reported that the drones were performing maneuvers that seem beyond current technological capabilities.
Concerns have been raised about the deployment of American nuclear weapons to the region for the first time since the Cold War, leading to increased suspicions that the drone activity might be linked to Russia.
In America, experts have warned that the drone activity could be intelligence gathering by Iran or Russia. Philip Ingram, a former British military intelligence Colonel, said the recent drone sightings in the UK had ‘all the hallmarks’ of an operation by Russia’s secretive GRU.
The US Air Force admitted last month that drones had flown close to three of its UK bases – including Lakenheath, Feltwell as well as RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk.
Farmworker Ricky Fletcher, 43, was leaving work on November 29 when initially he only saw one of them flying above.
He told us: ‘I first saw them on the farm I work at, I was leaving work at 4pm on Friday evening and saw one flying way from Feltwell low to the ground, I almost thought it was a helicopter, it was so big.
‘But it wasn’t. The way the lights flashed it wasn’t a plane. It was definitely a drone.’
However, soon after that, he claims the sky was filled with a dozen of them.
‘All of a sudden we looked up and saw about 10 of them circling around. We were fascinated by them, they were just circling around, not really flying in the same direction.’
He added: ‘We couldn’t believe what we were seeing.’
‘They moved in and circled around that one there was over my village in Hockwold between Lakenheath and Feltwell.’
He said he drove home, in the same village, but could still see them circling over.
‘I would come out to smoke and would see them at night,’ he said.
This came after footage emerged of what is suspected to be four drones, brazenly flying with bright lights, in the early evening darkness above RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk.
While two of the drones to the left of the screen in the video appear stationary, the other two are shown moving and passing each other on the night of November 28.
The bright light at the top of the screen is believed to be the planet Venus which can be seen in the south-western sky in the month of November.
The planet which is the brightest in the earth’s solar system is often confused with being an aircraft or rocket.
The sightings which are said to have started on November 20 and continued for several days have followed similar drone ‘invasions’ in New Jersey.
Unknown craft are reported to have circled the US Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in the state which manufactures and researches weapons including arms supplied to Ukraine.
Some reports have talked of ‘car-sized’ drones over New Jersey since mid-November, sometimes appearing in groups and often remaining in the same place for hours at a time. They are also said to have been spotted around New York, Texas and Oklahoma.
A New Jersey police department sparked concern after it revealed that a drone it sent up to track a mystery aircraft ‘easily’ evaded their device before disappearing into thin air.
Ocean County Sheriff Michael Mastronardy said a drone was launched after one of his officers saw 50 unmanned aerial vehicles, ‘coming off the ocean’.
The officer dialed 911 to alert state police, the FBI and the Coast Guard.The maritime agency then reported seeing spotted 13 drones following their boat, estimating that the devices had a wingspan of eight feet.
Matronardy told NewsNation’s Rich McHugh the force put up an ‘industrial grade’ drone to follow one of the devices, but it quickly slipped through their grasp.
The incident is just one of many drone sightings concerning locals in the Garden State and beyond.
‘If this is not our military, then it’s even more scary,’ McHugh said.
Intelligence analysts from both the US and UK have pointed the finger at interference by Russian despot Vladimir Putin.
The video at RAF Lakenheath was taken shortly after British authorities had announced that 60 soldiers were being sent to investigate the sightings at the three UK bases.
Two days after it was taken, an RAF Chinook apparently flew British special forces troops to join the probe at RAF Lakenheath which is home to the to the 48th Fighter Wing’s F-15E Strike Eagle and F-35A Lightning II aircraft.
Flight tracker records showed the Chinook leaving RAF Odiham, Hampshire, and flying to Poole, Dorset, to apparently pick up SBS troops before heading to Hereford where the SAS are based, and then on to the US base.
Earlier this month, villagers near RAF Lakenheath described seeing the drones on repeated nights, along with an increase in security patrols by MoD police. The base stated this week that there had been no new sightings in recent days.
A retired British spymaster yesterday claimed that Kremlin intelligence services were potentially gearing up for a fresh wave of incursions into UK airspace.
Philip Ingram, a former British military intelligence Colonel, said the recent drone sightings had ‘all the hallmarks’ of an operation by Russia’s secretive GRU spy agency.
‘It’s a distinct possibility if not a certain probability this is all down to Russian intelligence,’ he said. ‘
They and the GRU are just a bunch of petulant little boys. They’re trying to suggest they have the ability to disrupt and influence through a level of nuisance action.’
He added: ‘I would say we will see another flurry of activity in the next few months for sure. Whether drones or something else, I suspect something else.’
Col Ingram said Russians or their agents could also be using the UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) to test Western forces’ responses and capabilities.
He suggested they were potentially carrying out such operations to massage Russian tyrant Putin’s bruised ego, after his failures in Ukraine.
He also claimed the drones were part of a wider spate of small, ‘seemingly isolated’ incidents which could be part of a larger coordinated test of disruption tactics.
‘There’s a pattern building up and from an intelligence perspective, I don’t like patterns,’ Col Ingram added.
‘Each one of these things in isolation won’t massively disrupt our way of life and none will potentially raise a big question mark but if you suddenly put them together and they all happen at once, then the level of disruption you could have could be really serious.’
The sightings follow a series of suspicious incidents worldwide, which have seen hackers carrying out cyber attacks, sabotaging underwater internet cables and bomb scares triggering chaos at Gatwick and in central London.
The FBI and other agencies are said to investigating the sightings in America, but the Department of Homeland Security said on Wednesday: ‘We have no more information as to where these drones are coming from, where they’re launching from, where they’re landing.’
Britain this week unveiled its newest weapon in the war against drones – a high powered laser which is able to scorch the devices out of the sky in seconds.
The high-energy device, mounted on the roof of a Wolfhound armoured vehicle, was successfully tested at the Radnor Range in mid-Wales.
Soldiers from 16 Royal Artillery – an air defence regiment based near Portsmouth, Hampshire – were able to track and destroy hovering targets.
Retired police lieutenant and intelligence analyst Tim McMillan told DailyMail.com the descriptions of the UFOs in Jersey ‘sound exactly like Russian Orlan-10 drones’ — secretive craft that fly in packs of three to five.
The Orlan-10 craft comes with ‘standard positional lighting’ — a red light on the left (port) wingtip, a green light on the right (starboard) wingtip, and white taillights, similar to the lights seen on ordinary aircraft and Jersey’s ‘mystery drones.’
Experts suggest that Russia could be carrying out an intelligence-gathering mission known as ‘ferreting’, meant to intentionally trigger and test a rival’s airspace defence procedures and response times.
Or the Kremlin could simply be spying on allies of Ukraine who are aiding the fight against Russia’s invasion.
While experts could not rule out a theory that Iran was behind the attacks, argued by NJ Congressman Jeff Van Drew, but denied by the Pentagon, White House officials have long noted that Russia and Iran collaborate on military drone development.
‘Russia has been very aggressive and reckless with its responses to Western support of Ukraine,’ Lt McMillan told DailyMail.com. ‘This isn’t something I see discussed in US media, but it’s well documented and openly discussed here in Europe.’
The first New Jersey drone sightings appeared over the US Army’s Picatinny Arsenal on November 18, but reports to varying levels of credibility have now spread to at least 12 counties throughout the Garden State.
Officials have received reports of craft flying of ‘water reservoirs, electric transmission lines, rail stations, police departments, and military installations’ in recent weeks, according to Florham Park, NJ police chief Joseph J Orlando.
But those earliest and most credible sightings above Picatinny, according to Lt McMillan, are most worth focusing on.
‘Picatinny Arsenal,’ as Lt McMillan told DailyMail.com, is ‘home of the US Army’s CCDC Armaments Center, which is responsible for manufacturing and supplying Ukraine with 155mm artillery ammunition.’
Republican Rep Jeff Van Drew has claimed that Iran is behind the drones in New Jersey, telling reporters that the nation parked a ‘mothership’ off the East Coast.
MailOnline have approached the MoD for further comment
